


Druxy

by yonnna



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Abuse in general, Child Abuse, Darkfic, Emotional Abuse, F/M, Fermet basically, Hurt No Comfort, graphic descriptions of niki's injuries, it's Fermet/Niki in the sense that Niki thinks it's romantic but it's disgusting, spoilers for 1711/2002, writing this gave me an aneurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 19:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9007468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: Lucrezia leaves Niki in Fermet's care.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the epilogues of both 1711 and 2002 this time round. Also sorta… assuming that Czes winds up back in Fermet’s hands because as long as I’m exploring the worst of all possible world’s anyway, why not.

> “My dear Niki."

She may have been granted eternal life three hundred years ago but she does not _feel_  alive until this moment; until she hears him say her name once more. 

There has been this _fog_  over her perception of the world since the explosion. Lucrezia is a very kind mistress — to _her_ , at least. She dresses her wounds every day and accompanies her wherever she goes, and Niki ought to be grateful but she is never _there_  enough to be anything. There is only one thing the woman can do to truly capture her attention, to pull it away from the looping memories that comsume her thoughts: when she mentions the name _Fermet_ , Niki is alight with purpose, and so she mentions it often. 

 _Fermet_ , who had _given_ her purpose, who had made her feel as though she had as much right to live as anyone else in the world, who had given her a home; Fermet, whom she had loved, and who had loved her in turn. When Lucrezia had told her that she knew where the man was and that, if she wished, she could be with him again, Niki’s eyes had been as wide and bright as the moon. 

Now she stands before him and he is something vivid and clear in a world that passes her by in a blur. He is _real_ , and she is happy. 

“Dear, sweet Niki.” His hand leads her to sit beside him, and the touch is so welcome that when he lets go she reaches out searchingly until it is replaced by another, and another, and another. His hand on her arm, his hand on her chin, then his hand on her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb. “I was distraught when I heard what they’d done to you, those awful men —”

She does not understand who he refers to, but it does not matter. She does not notice the pause, does not feel his eyes watching her reaction from behind his fringe — she does not _care_. A soft red brushes her skin where his hand caresses; this is the only thing she can think of.

“But when Lady Lucrezia told me that you survived, my heart leapt.” She nods in understanding — _yes, my heart leapt to hear about you, too_  — smiling so broadly that her jaw aches. He inches closer to her, shoulder to shoulder, and lifts his other hand to the right side of her face. “Even if you did suffer…  _may I_?”

The pressure against her wounds makes her flinch, but the warmth brings her closer. She does not descent, but neither does she know what he’s _asking_  until he begins to unravel the bandage. She draws back in reflex, shaking her head frantically. 

“Now, Niki.” Her hysteria comes to an abrupt stop, stillness settling over her as she watches him frown. “I hope you don’t believe I would think any less of you. Whatever your deformities, I would love you still.” 

Her brow furrows, but she does not move when he leans towards her again. 

_Love._

_He loves me_. 

The bandages fall away in long strips. She shudders as her wounds are exposed to cold air. His fingers dance lightly over a constellation of burns at the base of her neck, and she almost cries out, but he _smiles_  and she bites her tongue. _He loves me_. 

“My _Niki_ ,” he croons. She feels his breath against her lips, and _his_ lips soon follow, pressing gently, _gently_ and softly like the way he sings her name, then so hard that it would bruise if the elixir did not so easily heal such things. “You truly are beautiful.”

He kisses her — first her lips, then the raw red flesh of her cheek, the exposed bone of her jaw, her scarred neck — all the while humming her name like a mantra. _Niki, Niki, Niki_. Each kiss hurts more than the last, sensitive skin burning as lips brush against it, but the way he says her name makes the pain bearable. She breathes small gasps through weak lungs. 

 _He loves me_. 

* * *

Screams fill her ears that night, but in her dreams she is in the factories and this is nothing new. The children _always_  scream — of course they do; they are afraid, and delirious, and so,  _so_  angry. The girl beside her tears her hair out strand by strand — her voice sounds like a young boy’s when she cries out, cracking and degenerating into heaving sobs — and Niki only watches, a ghost with a heartbeat, too dead herself to help the dying. _"She can’t be helped,"_  and _"You'll be like that one day, too,"_  and  _"If you help her they’ll beat you,"_  running through her mind, silencing her. _"If you help her they’ll beat you,"_  but she supposes she _must_  help, because the cries stop here, abruptly. Even in memories the desolation feels real. 

The pain, too: searing, sharp, _real_ , but she _never_ screams. She closes her eyes and prays that this beating will be the last one, that it will break something they cannot fix, that it will bleed her dry; she closes her eyes and imagines the peace of death, and when she opens them again the looming figure of the bald man is replaced with the kind face of Fermet. 

Fermet with his soft smile, and his fair hair catching moonbeams — _like a guardian angel_ , she thinks. 

_So why does it still hurt?_

Her gaze follows the slope of his shoulder to where his hand rests on her forearm, to where his nails claw into the open wound like talons. She chokes out something that is almost a cry, wide eyes searching for an explanation in Fermet’s expression. 

“Quiet, _quiet._ ” His tone soothes while his nails dig deeper. She feels her breaths grow shallow. She is dreaming, she reminds herself — it feels real, but it often _does_. “I just got Czes to sleep. It would be cruel to wake him.”

Her whole body freezes at the name, lungs and all. _Czes_ — someone else she’d thought she would never see again. He had been a younger brother to her — or if she knew more about motherliness, perhaps even a _son_. He had reminded her of herself when she was younger, of the children she’d grown up with, and she’d taken fondly to looking after him, to ensuring that Lotto Valentino could not chew him up and spit him out as it had her. It brings a smile to her face, in spite of the physical pain, to hear that Fermet watches over him still. 

“You remember little Czes, don’t you? I can see it in your face, dear Niki.” His hand moves down her arm, scraping through worn flesh, blood seeping and trickling back in, wounds opening and rehealing, opening and rehealing, opening and rehealing, but never healing _enough_. He smiles at something, and she mistakenly thinks it is _her_. “Do you want to see him?”

Her response is so eager she almost jolts upright, prevented only by the agony moving causes. She nods, nods again and again and again. She thinks of Czes until the growing pain in her arm is only a sidenote, and Fermet laughs.

“Good. I’d like to make you happy, my Niki.” He removes the pressure from her arm slowly, and the agony subsides, and Niki thinks _this must be a_ good _dream_. She is not sure she’s ever had one before. He shifts and she notices that he is holding something in his other hand — a pen, perhaps. “But that can wait until tomorrow.”

He traces a vein from her jawline to the base of her neck. 

“For right now, feel free to be as sad as you’d like.” 

He raises his hand and plunges a syringe into her neck. 

* * *

She is in the factory — no, she is in the warehouse and — no,  she is on the streets of Lotto Valentino — _no_. Fermet is there, or he is not. He hurts her, or he does not. Her train of thought loses clarity, dream and memory and reality overlapping and interlacing and disappearing entirely. 

It’s not hazy. She can see everything very clearly. It is not hazy, it is constantly shifting — in and out of dream, in and out of darkness. She tries to focus on reality, but it flickers. Fermet is standing over her bed. Fermet is speaking to her. Fermet —

 _He loves me_. 

He is holding her face and kissing her softly — _no_.

He is standing and speaking to her. She catches a few words.

“— excited to see you.”

She blinks slowly. 

“Come in, Czes.”

 _Czes_. The moment snaps into focus.

She is going to see Czes again. The thought makes her happy. Happy enough to justify the way that Fermet must _drag_  the boy into the room (he is shy, she remembers), happy enough to justify his wide-eyed stare (she looks different, she knows). 

She pulls her sheets off and stumbles out of bed, reaching out to touch him, to hold him, to reaffirm that he still lives and breathes, reaching, _reaching_ , but he only draws further away. He staggers back, retreats into the arms he’d been struggling against, burying his face in the fabric of Fermet’s coat as he had in childhood, shaking, then, remembering himself, shaking _more_. 

“What did you — she — h-how did she —”

He tears himself away from Fermet but no nearer to Niki, small hands balled into trembling fists, and he opens his mouth, but reality flickers again before she hears what he says.

She is in the factory again, and the girl is screaming — _no_ , this is _Czes_ screaming. Why would Czes be screaming? She’s not sure she’s awake.

A door slams shut. 

Fermet is running his hands through her hair, as though to comfort her. She does not remember needing comforting, but she does not begrudge the gesture. He is so gentle, so compassionate. How strange her dreams are to take away the traits that most make him _him_. 

“I’m afraid I may not have suitably prepared dear Czes for the sight of — your injuries.” She nods, understanding settling in; she had frightened him. Even at three hundred, he is still a child. “I worried that hearing what happened to you would have an even worse effect on him — but it seems I made the wrong choice. I hope you can forgive me.”

She smiles, and gives her forgiveness too freely. 

* * *

“You should be more careful, Niki.” When next she has this sort of clarity she is watching her finger crawl across the kitchen counter to reattach itself, with no explanation as to what brings her to this moment except the knife in her left hand and the hand on her wrist. She glances over her shoulder to see Fermet. He must be steadying her; she still struggles to use her left as well as she had once used her right. 

“Here, I’ll do the rest.” He reaches around her to take the half-chopped onion from in front of her. They must be making dinner, she supposes. His arm brushes against the raw skin of hers, and she flinches. 

He smiles, taking the knife from her hand and moving to stand beside her. 

“Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.” He returns to cutting vegetables, but his eyes do not stray too far from her. She shakes her head. A lie. He is silent for a moment.

“Do some of them hurt more than others?” he asks calmly, and then in a way that upturns the corners of his mouth. “Which one hurts the _most_?”

“…?”

He wants to spare her the worst of her pain. She is baffled as always by his concern; she could hear him worry for her a thousand times and it would still sound like some beautiful foreign language to her ears. It had taken her long enough to master Italian after so many years of having reading and writing denied to her; she has accepted she will never be fluent in the language of love and care, but it makes her heart race all the same when he says these things.

She lifts her hand to point: a spot on her jaw where the skin is very nearly worn to the bone. Fermet sets the knife down and moves to lift her chin, and when she looks up she can see the glimmer of his eyes beneath his long fringe She would like to see them more often, more than in passing glances; he has beautiful, intelligent eyes, but there is something in them that does not match the warmth of his smile, and she cannot decide if it is something chilling or something intriguing.

“Thank you, Niki,” he breathes, studying the wound for so long that she must remind herself again how _lucky_ she is that the sight of her does not repulse him. She has been called lucky before — lucky that she had not been cast out on the streets, lucky that her master had bought her, lucky that she survived the workshops — but this is the only time the description rings _true_. “I’ve always appreciated your honesty. It warms my heart that you feel comfortable with exposing so much to me — you do, don’t you? Or am I mistaken?”

She nods at the first question, shakes her head at the second. _I do. No, I do._

“Ah, I’m glad.” He turns his attention back to the dinner preparation, but continues to muse: “You must have been so lonely, my dear Niki.”

She nods, even though he is not looking. _Yes_. She has been lonely as long as she can remember; at Lucrezia’s side, kind as she is, with her rescuers (she thinks of them fondly, but the three of them had been as _one_ and she had stood outside, a spare part to a perfectly functioning machine), in factories full of children like her and streets full of people who do not notice each other passing by. Every moment that he is not there, she has been alone.

“Thank goodness you’re home.”

Home.

Yes, home. Her bones may always ache and her flesh may always sting, and she may have gaps where her consciousness should be, but the thought of home, of Fermet and what he symbolises to her, is enough that she forgets. She forgets her dreams, she forgets Czes’s screaming, she forgets how sharp Fermet’s nails had felt beneath her skin, she forgets whether or not this had been a dream.

She is home.

* * *

Czes does not scream, this time.

He does not shake, either. He is very still. Almost motionless. He does not look like a child at all — or he looks too much like she had when she was a child, distant and impassive, somewhere else entirely, anywhere but _here_. She wants to tell him that she is okay, that she is _happy_ , even, but her mouth does not know how to form the words anymore so she just smiles at him from across the table. He seems to want to smile back, lips quivering with something other than fear, but his eyes dart to Fermet and he does not.

Fermet had explained to her that he had seen many terrible things in this past century. She had thought _haven’t we all?_ She had accepted the fact without question, knowing how harsh the world can be, but some part of her, some less numb part that being here has awakened, is saddened by the knowledge that she could not rescue Czes. She had hoped the world would not ruin this one. Some tragedies are committed to repeating themselves.

Czes does not touch his food. He only sits, silent, as though replaced by porcelain doll of the boy he had been.

Fermet speaks to him in English, and though Niki understands enough to get by in this country she cannot keep up with the pace of his words or the level of his vocabulary. She is content not to understand; his voice sounds full of life, wonderful no matter what words he chooses. She is content to listen.

Czes does not respond, until he lapses into Italian for a moment — _mio caro_ — and then he responds only in a shudder.

“It’s very rude to leave a home-cooked meal go cold, Czes,” Fermet says, leaning across the table. Niki looks up, smile dropping just a fraction. That wonderful quality in his voice seems to have faded — only slightly, but she listens to it so intently that she notices, and it makes her stomach twist.

She reaches out to tap his shoulder, hoping to convey that she does not _mind_ if Czes chooses not to eat. Fermet is surely worried for his health, but if he does not want to eat, he —

She stops. There is a blank — some fatal moment that she misses wherein Czes’s knife ends up in Fermet’s grip — and then the blade is buried into his hand, pinning it to the table.

Now Czes screams. He screams, and she knows exactly what it will sound like when the screams turn to heaving sobs because she _dreamed_ this scream, but now she does not have a dream to incorporate it into and it is visceral and _real_. She is too awake.

She is too awake, watching his face contort in pain, watching the blood squirm against the blade. She is a child again and watching a girl like her be beaten bloody, and a voice in the back of her head tells her _if you try to help you’ll only get beaten_ , so she does not. She does not try to help. She runs.

Or stumbles — as best she can. She kicks back her chair and all she can think is to get away, get through the door, get down the hall. She reaches her bedroom and puts her weight against the doorframe. She cannot comprehend what she has seen but she is sure it is a monster, a demon, a — a curse. She has always been _cursed_.

Yet no monster comes to tear through her walls.

When he knocks at her door he is a gentleman. He speaks slowly, softly, low and gentle like a lullaby:

“Did I scare you, my dear Niki?”

 _My dear Niki_ , he says, and she is barely breathing, recalling the times he has said these words before. She is sixteen and looking for a place to die and he tells her _you have a home here, Niki_ , and she finds a place to _live_. She is nineteen and willing to risk herself for him and he tells her _it’s too dangerous, Niki_ , and she dares to think that her life has worth. She is ancient and he kisses her and sings _Niki, Niki, Niki_ , and she is human again.

“Czes is perfectly fine.”

He has _never_ scared her. He has always eased her fears. She tells herself this as she reaches for the doorknob, but her fingers still tremble; knowing that he has never scared her does not ease the fact that he is scaring her _now_.

 _He loves me_ , she reminds herself, opening the door.

He loves her, and she does not understand why this translates so easily to pain.

“Oh Niki.” He holds her too tightly, every burn and cut stinging at once, and the way he says her name is not enough to stop her trembling. “I hope you don’t run next time.”

There is something cold and metallic at the small of her back, and then there is pain — sharper, more poignant than the sort that usually haunts her. She shakes, tremendously, as though shaking is all she can do.

“I was so looking forward to seeing your face, when you saw —” He smiles, pulling her closer, pushing the knife deeper. He lifts her chin with his free hand, running a finger along her jaw, raw flesh and exposed bone. _Which one hurts the most?_ She screams but it is soundless; her breathing comes in a short, shallow breaths.

“Grief always has been so _becoming_ on you.”

He kisses her and it hurts.


End file.
